Episodes
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In this episode, we discuss the very first week of school on the farm! For those of you who have tuned in to previous episodes, you know that we have forged a partnership with the Wauhatchie Forrest School, which is a local outdoor school that embraces a variety of teaching approaches, including Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggieo-Emilia. The school hosts students from pre-K through 5th grade and is focused on instilling lifelong learning in students by rooting them in a foundational understanding of the natural world. In a world where kids are often connected to screens all day long, a kinetic educational approach that helps kids learn outside all day long is such a breath of fresh air. Rachel and I are so excited to not only be hosting this innovative school, but feel incredibly blessed that our boys will be able to benefit from this unique learning opportunity. My favorite part of their school is the response to the question, "What do they do when it's raining?" The answer, "wear a jacket". Similarly, when asked, "What do the kids do when it is cold and raining?" The answer, "Wear a heavier coat." As a recovering infantryman, Joe was sold on this mantra!
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Spring has Sprung at Quail Run Farm! We're back to update you all on a busy few weeks here on the farm. In this episode, we take a slightly new approach to our updates and give you some of the highlights from the past few weeks on the farm. All things bees to piglets to momma cows on their hind legs.. just another couple of weeks on the farm.
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Episodes manquant?
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It's the end of 2024 at Quail Run Farm! In an already busy festive season, Quail Run partners with Land To Table.. some new friends on the farm in form of turkeys, chicken and more pigs! One of our WWOOFers, Becca, joined us to cover this period. She is now buying her first piece of land from all she learnt here on the farm- go Becca!
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A combined episode covering the weeks 26th Feb to 10th March. A busy two weeks for us on the farm covering some big projects.. working the cattle, getting the pigs ready for piglets and always the unexpected events of farm life!
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As we enter the Fall season, we begin to explore more ways to share our farm with the community. Juliette, who was one of our longest-serving WWOOFers, and a nanny for our boys, joins this episode to talk about her adventures on the farm. Juliette painted several murals on the barns, revamped our logo, designed an interactive farm map, and always kept folks laughing. During these months we prepped for our first Fall Harvest Festival, finished several infrastructure additions and renovations to the farm to welcome people to the farm. We also castrated hogs, birthed a wave of baby goats, finished the greenhouse, built outhouses, finished renovating our house, and recruited (and retired) our second livestock guardian dog for killing the chickens she was supposed to protect.
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In "Who Run the Farm? Girls Do!" we have special guest, AJ, who joins us to talk about her adventures on the farm during this time. With Melissa, AJ, and Morgan, it truly was the Charley's Angels period of the farm!
We are in the heat of summer, and I had convinced Rachel to let me break the species cap, first with meat chickens (broilers), then with ducks (fortunately we purchased duck life insurance), and guineas (a surprise from Tim). Morgan also imposed a new level of sophistication in marketing and project management when she wasn't caring for her child, Bucky, and AJ remembers her adventures with "pet cow" and "ghost eyes"! We will let you guess which one she preferred!
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In this episode, Melissa boots Joe from the podcast and has our South African WWOOFer, Liam, join to share his experience on the farm. Liam discusses all the fun he had rescuing a sick pig and cleaning the farrowing pens from last season...and many other fun adventures! Liam also regales us with his adventures herding ducks and chickens, and contemplates the beauty of the QRF bacon!
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In this episode, Tim Woodlee joins to talk about the period after Roy left the farm. This was the era of the three Tims: Tim Copass, Tim Whitaker, and Tim Woodlee. We tell some of our favorite "Big Tim" stories, and talk about construction on the house, building out farrowing pens, our first piglets born on the farm, moving cattle, digging water lines, and the sort of Memorial Day drama that you can only get on the farm...complete with cut electrical lines, water spewing 20 feet in the air, and the mystery of the missing back pills... all as our weekend guests arrived!
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Based on audience feedback, we are moving from bi-weekly to weekly updates. These are shorter in length (about 15 minutes on average). For this week, we discuss our trip to the Pick TN Conference, which brought together small scale farmers from across the state, particularly those working in the agritourism space. We met several new friends and walked away armed with all sorts of new ideas! We strongly encourage folks to find similar conferences or gatherings in their area. In addition to the conference, we also received our first chicks for the season, started prepping our new bee hive area, released the goats back out to free range, and worked to coral the pigs after their latest jail brake!
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Lots of calving. Some uneventful. We lost one, after trying to nurse back to health...in the kitchen. Another one was born with a nervous problem and couldn't stand, but we bottle fed her for several days and brought her back to health. Castrated and weaned piglets. Cut a lot of trees. Fought off some coyotes, and made lots of headway in preparing for the school to come to the farm!
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If you like drama, this is the episode for you! We cover the period of March and April of 2023, which proved to be the most dramatic 60 days on the farm. Melissa showed up, a mini tornado hit, and our farm manager, Roy, got back on drugs and totaled a truck and trailer hauling a load of pigs. The pigs completed their journey in a U-Haul trailer. Roy left the farm, Tim arrive, and we added a few more species. Amidst the craziness, Melissa decided she couldn't leave the chaos and agreed to come back and work for an entire year. At the time, it seemed like the hardest period on the farm, but looking back, many of our most entertaining stories came out of these two months.
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Coldest nights of the year and everyone wants to have their babies! Hear how we battled the cold by putting new mommas and babies in the hay barn and used molasses to try to keep water from freezing. On the heels of the cold, we got rain...tons of rain. From frozen hands to trucks stuck in mud, a tough few weeks on the homestead! On the people side, we say goodbye to Becca, and welcome Melissa back from her South African adventures!
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Torrential downpours, massive winds that bring down trees, and the coldest nights of the year...perfect time to have babies! Tune in to hear our rough start to 2024!
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In this episode, Chad fills in for Melissa and takes the opportunity to remind listeners that he got here first! The time period is Jan and February of 2023. Amidst one of the coldest and rainiest winters on record, we added cows, put Jacob on his first bull calf, delivered our first baby animals, crowned the farm mascot (Bucky the Goat), launched our WWOOF program, started building a hog lot, repaired the front porch, demoed a bathroom, set-up tiny homes, installed bee hives, planted an orchard, and burned some things we probably shouldn't have. And yet Chad still remembers this as the calm before the storm!
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My wife, Rachel, joins to talk about how we met, how I convinced her to marry me, and ultimately move to our homestead. We also describe what it was like in those first few days on the farm...before all the craziness started. So tune in to hear from my favorite person in the world, and the source of pragmatism, reason, and stability that anchors the farm!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Meet Your Hosts, Joe Riley & Melissa Shepherd! In this first episode, we share the story of why we decided to move onto a farm and how we then went from 0 to 500 animals in the first year...all while maintaining our full-time jobs. If you want to learn about homesteading or just want some entertaining stories from people tackling the challenges of starting a farm, we invite you to join us on this journey.
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