Here she is!!

We are pleased to announce that Cinnamon had her calf this morning at about 6:55 a.m.

 Many of our recent visitors and Facebook followers have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our newest addition! Well, here she is!! Be warned that she is wet, naked and slimy in these photos. She is only moments old in these photos; before she even stood up for the first time. They were taken before our photographer got on the bus this morning!

 Cinnamon is one of our oldest dairy cows. If you've visited the farm, chances are you've met her. She is a Jersey cow. She comes in the barn every night. You've likely even milked her!

The calf  is a heifer (girl).  Both she and her mama are doing well. She will need a name. We've one suggestion so far; "Nutmeg".

A new baby!

We have a new bull calf. He was born yesterday, September 2, 2012, at about 4:05p.m. (Of course he was, we were supposed to be at a dinner party at 4:00.)
Cupcake, the mama cow, and the new calf are both doing well. She had an easy delivery assisted by Heidi (since we were both dressed to leave).
He had his first bottle last night and loved it.
He is a nice big calf, dark in color.
Visiting hours are daily 6-7 p.m. , by appointment or by chance.

*For those of you who don't know; this is Cupcake's first calf. She will now be a milking cow in our little herd. She is a Jersey cow.

Do you really want to work??

Last night during chore time it hit me. Maybe our guests really do want to work when they visit. Maybe they really would like to be more involved and get a better sense of what it would be like to live on a farm. Granted when you visit it would be an option, not at all mandatory. What do you think? Do you want to shovel manure? Do you want to push the sawdust cart up the hill to the upstairs of the barn and shovel shavings to throw under the cows? How about getting dirty? Do you want to grease the farm machinery? Clean the chicken coop? Carry the slop up to the pigs? How it generally works now is visitors come to stay in our guest house and they come out to the barn in the evenings at chore time and help a little bit. They do the fun stuff. They feed grain to the cows, pet the bunnies, etc. They aren't scraping the cow flops off the walkway or spending an hour shoveling soiled bedding out of goat pens.


Are we not offering enough of a glimpse into the real workings of how things get done?

We really don't want to scare people off. Our guest house is separate from the farm. It's neat and clean and easily will accommodate your whole family. When we first started this business, one of the things that I had written was you could go for hikes with the goats. Well, word got back to us that people had no interest in hiking with goats so they steered clear of us! We are looking for more visitors, not less! And please remember, once again, you can stay here in a nice quiet place out in the country and never ever have to step foot in the barn. It's your choice. Many of our guests stay here when there is a wedding or family event in the area. It's simply a great spot.

We are really interested in your input on this. Please feel free to leave your comments here or e-mail us direct.
Thanks a bunch!
The Ambrozaitis Family
Falkenbury Farm
http://www.falkenburyfarm.com/
jojoerobert@yahoo.com

The babies are arriving

Our baby goats started to arrive the day before Valentine's Day. The are the cutest little buggers. They dance and jump all over the place. Delila had her calf. It's a heifer. A nice little Jersey heifer. The girls haven't decided on a name yet. They have a couple in mind. For the first time in a long time, all the baby goats have names so far. I'm not sure how we're going to spell them all yet so I guess I won't post them yet. We still have enough snow to play in. We're expecting ice in the morning. We'll see what that does for the school commutes. Since it's Sunday, it was pizza night. Jake made us 2 fabulous pizzas. Homemade mozzarella, ricotta, and pepperoni. Pretty cool to use all your own toppings. Bob has bacon in the smoker that we'll finish smoking tomorrow.

A Thank You for a Farm Visit

I wanted to share with you an e-mail I received recently. We had a family stay on the farm from the city.

"Thank you for a great stay! My family really loved spending time at the farm over this past weekend. We all learned a ton from your children and enjoyed some playtime outdoors. We even made it to the Rodeo not too far away. The kids are still squeamish of animals but a little less now that they met your friendly tomato eating goats!"

This is what it's all about. We love sharing our farm with our guests.

Little guests help with chores

Friday night we had guests from New York that helped with chores. The littlest boy was the biggest helper! He filled water pail after water pail and carried them to the milking cows. The family enjoyed watching the cows come in and feeding them their grain for dinner. They helped feed the goats, pet the bunnies and get the eggs.

We have 4 batches of bunnies at the moment and 5 baby (kid) goats. We even had a calf born during the night when our guests from New York were here.

Tonight we are expecting visitors from MA. They are hoping to arrive on time to help w/ chores too!

Happy New Year!

I had big plans to show everyone some photos I took for Christmas. My computer had other ideas.....
On Christmas Eve we had a new baby calf born. He is adorable. He is big and strong and blocky, yet still adorable. He is also very friendly. He's black with a white face. His name is "Nick" after St. Nicholas for Christmas, get it?
There are also some of the cutest bunnies ever in the barn right now. The littlest ones are a light red with some patches of other colors on them, like calico. Actually there is one grey one in that litter too. Kind of strange, but what can you do?
We had all of our kids here for Christmas. That was the best part of the holiday!!
On New Year's Eve we had a few friends over and had tons of food. At midnight we were in the hot tub as planned. Several tubbers made snow angels and then jumped back in. I really wish you could see those photos!
We hope everyone celebrated their holidays happily and we wish everyone a very happy, healthy New Year!
Oh! And we have snow!! Come on up and play!!!

School vacation

Our kids have a 5 day weekend. They are so excited. Now if we weren't tied down with these house renovations, we could actually go somewhere and do something. But, the plumber is downstairs plumbing in our bathroom renovations as I type. I kind of need to be here to answer questions, etc. Our son is helping him this morning.
We have part of our hay field fenced in with what I call stretchy fence. So the cows are where they usually aren't and when you look out the window you think they are loose. The field was too wet this season and we weren't able to mow a second time for hay or we would've made big ruts and ruined the field.
Our new BIG Boer buck has been busy. If it's baby goats you're crazy about, make a reservation for the middle of March!

End of July...

Had the Jeep out today.
Helped a friend get some old water heaters out of their basement.
Tried to work on the plan for the new deck. I wish everyone I knew would stop by and give me ideas! Everyone I ask has a different idea. I love to hear what everyone thinks will work best. It's fascinating how different minds work.
Went to the firemen's auction in Whiting yesterday. Maybe should've stayed home? I really like auctions.
We had visitors in the guest house last night. They were nice people. The mom and I chatted quite a bit. We seemed to have lots in common. They left us a bowl of fresh peaches from Maryland. They were awesome!!
We are dog sitting. We haven't done that in about 20 years. He is a great dog. Very well behaved. (We don't have a dog of our 0wn.)

Construction Underway

The construction is moving along on our house's addition. We are moving things around a bit inside and making a new deck, etc. It is crazy. I spend more time moving things around than anything else. What I really need to do it throw stuff away. I'm not good at that!

The guest house is open for business. The baby goats are getting bigger but we still have some friendly and fun ones that like attention. We are close to a few great lakes and ponds that are wonderful for swimming, boating and fishing.