We’re heading down home… to your farms! Urban, suburban, or rural — whatever you’re growing and doing, we want to see it.
Welcome to the Down Home Farm Tours series. To see all the farms and homesteads featured in this series, click here. If you’d like to be featured, please read here for guidelines.
Welcome, Little Boy Blue Farm, Gardens, and Apiary!
Today, you get to meet Little Boy Blue Farm, Gardens and Apiary from Northern Minnesota. You may already know Megan and her family from her sweet blog Purple Dancing Dahlias where she shares real food recipes and more homestead updates. Look at her hard workers!
What is your name and the names of your family members?
We are Jake and Megan. Our children are Asa, Zach, Grace, and Jairden.
What is the name of your farm/homestead?
We are tossing around the idea of calling our farm Little Boy Blue Farm, Gardens, and Apiary after our youngest son. He is the only one of our children that has blond curly hair and blue eyes. He had cancer last year and lost all of his hair but it is starting to come back blond and still curly. Put him in a pair of blue overalls and he looks just like the little boys in the “You been farming long?” picture.
How long have you been farming/homesteading?
As a family we have been farming/homesteading since November 2008.
Share a brief description of your farm/homestead.
My parents are generously sharing their 80 acres that adjoins our 300×300 plot. We use as many recycled materials as we can. People comment on how creative and artsy we are; we tell them we are just cheap. 😉 But really, I hate throwing away things that can be reused again.
What are you raising, growing, and doing?
In the last 3-1/2 years we have added lots of gardens (practicing as much square foot and vertical gardening as we can), bees, nine Icelandic sheep (wool, milk, and meat), seven cows (Scottish Highlanders for beef and Jersey for milk), one pony named Duck, heritage pastured chickens (Buckeyes), geese (Toulouse), and ducks (Call) for pastured eggs. Last summer’s big project was renovating the barn for more storage, more space for animals if need be and a better milking space. We have a passion for really good food and a passion to teach about getting back to farming roots. Our end goal is to be self-sustaining with hopes that we can eventually be totally off grid.
How did you get into farming/homesteading?
I grew up on a farm. By the time I was in high school most of the animals were gone. Just not enough time for it all.
Any future plans?
We are hoping to add a multi-fruit orchard. U-pick raspberries, rhubarb, strawberries, and asparagus.
Do you have any sad stories to share?
Our bees are not doing well this year. We loss an entire hive this spring — they just disappeared. Our other hive was going great guns and now to has seemed to collapse. We are thinking of scrapping it for this year, cleaning up the boxes and starting over next year. Last year we got over 100 pounds of honey.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
We grow all heirloom/organic varieties, raise clean pasture fed animals, and use sustainable farming practices. We feed a Non-GMO feed that we mix ourselves and we just switched to no feed for our large livestock animals.
Let’s Tour Little Boy Blue Farm, Gardens, and Apiary!
(Wardee: In the captions below, you’re hearing from Megan, as she tells what is in each picture.)
This is the back half of our front garden showing King of the Garden Lima Beans and our greenhouse.
This is a cattle panel arch that we grew squash on. [Wardee: Love it!]
The squash that grew on the panels. They weigh about 45 pounds each!
Icelandic Sheep
Milking a Jersey using a Babson Brother’s Surge Bucket Milker — yumm milk!
(Back to Wardee) Megan, thank you for sharing with us! We hope you enjoy your free thank you video, our gift to you. Plus, feel free to display the following graphic on your site. (Right-click and save to your computer, then upload to your site and link to this farm tour post.)
Would you like to be featured?
Are you a homesteader or farmer at any level? You don’t have to live in the country, you don’t have to be doing everything.
Being on the journey is the only qualification. We want to see what you’re doing, no matter how big or small.
Click here for submission guidelines for the Down Home Farm Tours series. We’re excited to hear from you!
If you’re selected, we will share your farm/homestead pictures and stories in a dedicated blog post, plus you can add the featured graphic to your blog or website. And, we’ll give you a free thank you video of your choice!
Please give Megan a warm welcome in the comments! Be sure to visit her blog for farm happenings, recipes, homemaking and more.
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Love the farm name and your pictures. That could be our Jersey standing there being milked. There are lots of those old surge milkers still being used. We love ours!!
Thank you for sharing your inspirational farm life. I LOVE the way that you grew squash on cattle panels! How did you anchor the cattle panels? I’d love a detailed description of this! Thank you in advance.