A True Family Farm




When our boys help in the gardens they represent the fifth generation of the family to work the soil on Kimker Hill. Four generations still live on the farm today. Strong family bonds and a deep love and respect for the earth influence all of our farm practices.

Our gardens provide us with the best and purest of food, matchless beauty, and the ultimate earth science classroom for our homeschooled boys.

Sustainability is a popular buzz word among small scale agriculture. To us it means giving more than you take. Putting back what you use. Remembering that this beautiful earth will last forever and it's our commision to care for. In our gardens we try hard to follow these ideals and work with the earth's design, not against it.



Monday, March 31, 2008

Thanks For a Great Market

Thanks to all who helped make the market a success on Saturday. I hope everyone is happy with what they got. I'd love to hear your comments on my products. What do you like best? How do you fix it? I'm working on getting some of my recipes listed on the blog, but I'd love to hear about yours.

If you missed the market, you can still get some of my products everyday at Local Harvest Grocery & I'll be at the St. Louis Community Market on April 12th.

Is there something you'd like to have me hold for you? You can e-mail me at drwissman@sbcglobal.net & I can have your order ready in advance.

I've also had a lot of questions about buying from us locally. At this time we don't have an on-farm stand, but I do occassionally make special arrangements if you want to buy directly.

Joy, thank you for your comment. It was nice to meet you at the market!

Have a great day!

Friday, March 28, 2008

Just for FUN


Just playing around with posting some pictures from last year. We'll put up some current ones soon but right now all there is to look at around here is MUD!

This is a picture of one of the mobile chicken coops (called tractors). The electric poultry fence keeps them safe from predators. The fence is large yet very portable. It and the coop are moved every few days so that they always have fresh pasture to scratch on. Makes for HAPPY, HEALTHY chickens!

That's King the rooster and some of his girls. Most people don't realize it, but you don't have to have a rooster in your flock to get eggs! The hens lay just fine without him (although the eggs will not be fertile). But they seem to like having a man around anyway.
We have LOTS of pics to share! We'll post more as we have time.
PLEASE leave comments!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Market This Week!

Well, our new fence for the chickens has arrived. Yesterday we moved the chickens pen again & put up the new fence & put the charger on. It's time to be sure they don't escape, the peas are sprouting & they won't stand a chance if the chickens see them.

We have so many little plants in the basement, I've run out of room to transplant them. I need more grow lights again!

Now it's time to begin to prepare for this week's market. This Saturday, March 29th, will be the last winter market at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood for this season. We'll be there with all the usuals, a whole assortment of Certified Organic Grains, Freshly Ground Flours (whole wheat, spelt, buckwheat, quinoa, rye, ... & of course, my Combo Flour (wheat & flaxseed) & my new 10-Grain Flour that was an instant hit!). Plus, I'll have all my Healthy mixes: Pancake Mix-Regular or Milk-free, Waffle Mix, Pizza Dough Mix, Cornbread Mix, Banana Muffin Mix & Zucchini Spice Muffin Mix. I'll also have lots of Certified Organic beans, peas, lentils, popcorn & whole wheat couscous; plus the various mixtures of them: Chili Bean Medley, Mixed Beans & Peas & the newest one, Split Pea Soup Mix. Oh yeah, dried pineapple & mango, too.

Want more...we now have our Dealers Egg license & I'll have quite a few dozen eggs from our free-range (within reason) chickens.

If you get there early, you may even manage to get some fresh-picked Rainbow Lights Swiss Chard. It's finally recovering from the chicken raid in February!. The snow storm detached just enough of the plastic on the hoophouse for them to squeeze in & they devoured everything. It was great for the egg production, but not the vegetables.

Hope you can join us on Saturday! I'd better get busy!!!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

It's a sunny day finally!

Yeah! The sun is finally out! We have had so much rain this past week. We are very happy we live on top of a hill. There is so much flooding going on near-by. The sunshine is putting us all in a better mood. The cats, dogs and chickens are all busy running around. I'm hoping the peas will pop out of the ground today, I'm ready to see green in the garden again!

Friday, March 14, 2008

Progress!

We now have several hundred pepper and tomato plants growing. Yesterday, I started kohlrabi, eggplant and swiss chard. It's very exciting to watch everything growing and imagining what they'll look like in the garden. Even more exciting, I just found 9 green tomatoes on the plants in our kitchen picture window!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Getting Busy

Well, we're off and running for the year. We are getting a head start in the basement. We have little sprouts popping up every day. So far, we have tomato, tomatillo and pepper plants getting bigger all the time, and our peas finally sprouted yesterday.