I want to thank the vendors that showed up and helped make our 1st annual festival a success.

Cedar Creek Winery, Krafty kitty Knit Stitch & Crochet, Freya's Kitchen & Krafts, Usborne Books & More, Scentsy  Candles, William Messer with his artwork, Country Market, and  the folks that had the booth to benefit MS. To show our appreciation, your booth spaces at our festivals will always be free.   I also want to thank the volunteers that were here to help Tina Williams helped all week prior to the festival besides the day of the festival.  Alex Fisher and Tyler Weltich were wonderful help with parking and helping to set up the morning of the festival and both boys have been a big help to us over the last couple years. My youngest son, Daryl Short, and his wife Amber were a tremendous help all year as far as helping us with the berries and the festival. I also want to thank the folks who came to check out the festival and we hope that you will come back each year and watch us grow with more to look at and fun activities to participate in as a family.  The horse Lazarus finally pooped on # 51 for all of those in the cow pie bingo.  Anyone who has comments or suggestions for next year is welcome to leave comments on our blog or facebook page.  ALL comments are appreciated.....we want to know what we can do to improve, and  anything that you would like to see here at the festival or anything we need to change to be better next time.  I do know we needed to get the food prepared earlier and I do apologize for that.... I will make sure that isn't the case next year.  I learned alot from this year.  There will be better signage next year along with advertising much more in advance.  I would like suggestions on the time of year we are considering the middle to end of June for our next event.  I felt that Labor Day weekend may not have been the best choice.  I would love to have a car show here, lumberjack show on the pond,  a civil war reinactment, and a live band.  We are in the planning stage for our next festival already so any input would be helpful.  Thank you all again and see you next year!!!! 

I hope all of you are getting as excited as we are about the festival.  We are trying to get signs made so people are able to find us easily and also that more people are aware of the event!!  We have been busy printing up fliers and will be getting them out to other businesses in hopes that people will want to attend this very exciting event!!  We have many other small businesses that are joining us that make homemade crafts, and many interesting things.  There will absolutely be something here for everyone to look at and do.  The games are for All ages and will provide lots of laughs and a good time for all.  We hope you and your family and friends will help us make this a great day by coming and having some fun with us as we wrap up this season.  See you September 3rd!!!!!!!!!!!!  Jill Zink

 

Well we are getting set for the festival and we are going to have some merchants joining us.  Cedar Creek Winery will be offering wine for sale, Country Market will have mums for sale, Adys Fabrics will be bringing items to sell and there are more that will probably be here to kick off the festival.  Hope to see you all!!!!!!!!!  Jill

Our berry festival will be September 3rd, 2011 from 9am-6pm.  See our events page for the times of each event.  I am not sure we will be able to do the goat milking demo since I am not sure that our goats milk will last that long.  Other than that we should be good to go since we will start stocking up on the berries for the berry stomp.  I am sorry it took so long to post a date and that we were unable to host the event on the original date of August 13th, 2011.  I was afraid to have it then since the hay field was so dry (damage to hay and fire hazard).  I hope you will all mark this new date on your calendars and plan to attend.  I think it will be a fun filled day for your families and ours.  Our first event is the goat trimming demo at 9am so come early and join us for a full day of fun.  We will give  away prizes to the sack race winners in each age group and also to the pie eating contest winner.  The cow pie bingo winner will win 1/2 the pot of the total squares purchased and the other 1/2 will cover the cost of our awards, supplies, and cost of restroom facilities.  Please tell your friends and we look forward to seeing you on September 3rd!!!!!!!!!!!!  Jill Zink

 

At this time our berry festival is being pushed back to a later date.  I am not yet sure on the new date but it will possibly be September 17th or as late as Oct 1st.  I will post that date as soon as possible.  I know many of you are looking forward to this event.  Thank you. Jill

       June 17,2011

    Today we picked the first berries of the season.  We only had 2 lbs. of raspberries and  we picked 2 lbs of blueberries.  There were still a few more blueberries but we thought we'd leave them  a bit longer.  The raspberries will be a few days before there are any more ripe.  This season everything seems to be behind a couple of weeks.  We are going to have our blackberries and raspberries tested by a lab next week to see what is causing  some of them to die and the blackberry canes seem to have died back  halfway down the canes.   Ours are not the only ones that seem to be suffering and hopefully we can nip the problem in the bud before we lose our plants.  We planted a test plot of strawberries and they seem to be doing ok .  I am hoping that next year we can add strawberries to our list of berries that we have available.  We are going to hopefully make a trip to Michigan and see how they grow them in pots on posts and learn more from a commercial grower up there. 

    Our critterws are all doing well.  We have a new rooster  named road runner who seems to enjoy being petted but not really held.  He came to us from a family that hand raised him and showed him lots of love.  We also purchased a couple of paint boer goats from Kansas that make a wonderful addition to our farm.  Three of our young bucklings are going to go to Oklahoma the end of June to compete in the buck forage test which identifies bucklings that have a good average daily gain, good parasite resistance, and a loin eye that grows above the other competitors.  This is our first year to send any bucklings and we are hoping they do well.  We currently have 31 goats, 2 calves that are just over a year old, 4 ducks, 13 chickens (although more to come since we have 3 hens setting on the nest), 1 horse ( we sold Kiowe the app mare), and 8 dogs.  Our turkey, peep peep, has gotten very protectve of me and so we have to keep an eye on him when we have visitors.  He likes me to kiss the top of his head and everyone else he seems to want to flog or peck.  

    Other exciting news is our neighbor Jeff has moved his horse back riding business to just across the road from us so if any of you like to ride horses then when you come bring some jeans and plan a day where you can not only pick berries but go for a nice trail ride.  Jeff  charges $ 20/45 minute ride.  His horses are very gentle so even kids can enjoy a beautiful ride.  We look forward to seeing you all this season and  hope you can make our festival.  I think we may push it back to September though after we have cut the last cutting of hay so watch for any updates  on this page and the events page. 

 

We got most of the work in the berries done over the last couple weeks.  Thankfully we had nice weather for working outside.  We still have to prune out the old dead raspberry canes but everything else is done.  Fresh manure  with corn gluten to help control the weeds and then covered in thick mulch.  Hopefully this year we won't be fighting the weeds as much as last summer.  This summer we have to do a lot of canning and replenish our supply of green beans, tomatoes, tomato juice and corn.  We also sold most of our jams and jellies.  They sure taste good through the winter!!  We made wine last summer out of our blackberries and were very pleased with the results.  We are planning  when and where we are going to plant more blueberry bushes and also some black raspberries!!!  Before we take up the field that we currently have our berries planted in we need to plant a new hay field in our bottom 7 acre field.  Our herd size dictates that we keep at least as much land in hay if not increasing it some so that we will still have some to sell.  Well I better leave off here and get some shuteye.  We hope to see a nice crowd for our berryfest and visit with our returning customers and new friends.  God Bless! Jill Zink

We are extremely excited about our upcoming festival in August!  We are hammering out the details and planning what prizes we will award to our contest winners.  I hope you will all join us and enjoy a day of family fun.  We are even going to have a half pot prize for cow pie bingo.  That is where

you buy your numbered square ahead of time and whatever numbered square (painted on the ground) the calf poops on wins half the pot. We are hoping to also have good food available if we can get all the permits.  We are also hoping to offer something unusual....goat burgers, homemade berry ice cream, and beer battered onion rings.  We look forward to seeing you there.