Essential Oils Special!

If you have read any of our blog posts already or you know me, you know I love Young Living essential oils. I recently signed up to be a distributor, mostly for the 24% discount I get as a distributor. Now that I have been doing it for a few months and using the oils, I must say I love them! This month I am offering this book to anyone who signs up with the Premium Distributor Kit. This book is a wonderful resource when you are starting this new journey. It has all the Young Living Oils in it and has uses for all them. It has diagrams for vitaflex body points, and how to do the raindrop massage. This kit is so wonderful! It includes 11 5ml sample bottles of oils, a diffuser, and a few other goodies, this kit is valued at $300 for only $150! 

Whether you just want a healthier way to take care of your family or you want to go beyond that and teach others about these wonderful oils as well as earn an income for your family, I can help you! Please email me with any questions you might have @ lauralee.youngliving@gmail.com. I would love to talk to you more and all about the opportunities you can have as a Young Living Distributor. 

Premium Starter Kit

Spring is Here!

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Did you miss us?! It's been over a month since we have posted anything! That's far too long. That doesn't mean nothing has been happening on the homestead. It's quite the opposite! Now that school is back in session I (Mrs. Agape) have been very busy with homework. I am taking an agriculture class as well as a class on cultural diversity in early childhood education. Two very different classes, but they are both wonderful. Mr. Agape started a new job at a auto repair shop. He went to school to be a mechanic, later got a job on a farm as the mechanic but then fell in love with farming. However, he knew he didn't want to grow 100's of acres of rice and decided to go back to being a mechanic at an auto shop due to water restrictions on the farm since we are experiencing a drought here in California. We have been truly blessed with this new job. God is good! All the time! As part of our journey to a healthy lifestyle, this month we decided to avoid any food that has High fructose corn syrup and corn syrup in it. This has been a difficult journey since almost everything has it! This has forced us to eat at home more which has saved us some money too. We already made most of our meals from scratch so this part was not too difficult, but having to replace food that we had in the fridge like bread, ketchup, soy sauce, whip cream (I love it in my coffee), and ice cream (a must have for Mr. Agape). I am really wanting to get one of these to make homemade whipped cream and this to make ice cream. We definitely have to read all the labels to make sure it's not hiding in there.

Things on the farm have been even busier. Our Buff Orpington went broody and has been sitting on some eggs since mid-February. Last week Wednesday they finally hatched! She had 6 eggs but only 3 hatched. When we opened the other three, only one had anything growing in it, but it was severely underdeveloped. The other two had nothing in them. She is a wonderful momma and takes such great care of her chicks. They are so cute! They love to kick straw into their water and run away when momma tries to keep them warm. It's so nice not having to make sure the temperature is right for them or having to clean them. We were absolutely blessed to have a broody girl! We decided to separate her and put her in her own brooder house to sit on the eggs. I am glad we did, this way she doesn't have to worry about them getting too far away and the other chickens can't bother her.

One day old!

Cuddling with momma

Fresh straw for the chickens to kick around.

We were able to plant our garden the last two weekends. We have a great group of friends at our church who were willing to come out and help for the day. They helped us remove some of the cover crop and roto-till the ground. At the end of the day we finally rented a larger one, since our little one was not doing the job. Our poor friend had used the little one for a few hours and never complained, once we had to do it we realized how hard it was! Renting tools is a great idea and was much cheaper than we had expected. Next year we will do that first thing! We decided to do furrow watering again this year. Furrow watering is where you dig ditches and plant everything on the mounds. This encourages a deep root system and once the plants are developed you only have to water once every week or two! In the garden we have 8 varieties of tomatoes, 2 squashes, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, lots of corn, chives, basil, beans, sunflowers, rosemary, and onions. Many of these seeds were ones we get from our membership in the Seeds of the Month Club. It is so fun getting the envelope of seeds each month and seeing what they sent us. I pray that we will have a plentiful harvest, but we know God is the best farmer out there and He is the one who will decide if our plants will grow or not. On Monday we had a reporter come out and she will be writing an article for the local paper about our farm. We pray this will provide some customers for all of the wonderful produce we are growing.

Our friends helping clear the cover crop.

Finished results

We are getting lots of eggs, between 3 and 5 a day and have sold a few dozen and given a few dozen away as well. They are nice to have to give to friends or to trade for other goodies. We might trade for some goats milk soon. We also purchased 6 Blue Andalusian's in the beginning of February so we will have some more egg layers in a few months. In 10 days we will be getting our first delivery of broiler chickens. Broilers are meat chickens. We will be raising them in our front and backyard and moving them everyday. They take about 8 weeks to grow full size and then we will process them, freezer bag them, and sell them.

Fresh Eggs

We are enjoying our Young Living Oils and have been using them for so many things. This week I have been battling a cold and have not used any cold medicine at all! Some of the oils I have been using that are helping a lot include Thieves, R.C, Raven, Eucalyptus, Lemon, and Purification. Last night I had a glass of water with peppermint in it, when I woke up coughing I would take a few sips and the coughing would go away. I am so happy to have a replacement for medicines that usually make me feel worse anyways. It has been less than a week and I am pretty much feeling completely better.

What has been happening on your homestead? I'd love to hear about it! If you have a blog you would like to share, leave the link in the comments so I can check it out!

My Dream Country Girl Wife

My dream country girl wife is someone who loves me for who I am, someone who adds to my crazy ideas, but is not afraid to tell me when I've gone to far. My dream country girl wife is someone who will lovingly help me with chores around the farm, someone who isn't afraid to get dirty planting the garden, or cleaning out the chicken coop, or helping you cull chickens! My dream country girl wife is someone I met 4.5 years ago! Let me tell you a story.

It's funny how things progress. When I first met my wife, neither one of us wanted this lifestyle of raising farm animals and tilling the ground. My wife and I met on a dating site, like many do these days, we quickly fell for each other and started dating 2 weeks after we met. Why wait when you think you got a keeper? We took our time with the dating process though, we knew marriage was a big deal and a decision for life so we took our time deciding if this was who we wanted to be with for the rest of our lives. I was a mechanic on a local farm, and she lived an hour away from me and was a caregiver. One day my friend posted a book on my Facebook page, I think as somewhat of a tease, but crazy me, not knowing what it was about, I ordered it because I liked the title, it is called "Born-Again Dirt: Farming to the Glory of God" by: Noah Sanders. I got the book and slowly read through it, not because it wasn't interesting, but because I am a slow reader and would easily lose focus. I read the book and was so excited that you could actually farm to the glory of God and the way He actually designed it! So I pursued farming. This is now what I wanted to do, but on a bigger level, I wanted 5,000 acres and combines and tractors! I am not sure what my fiance thought of me at this point, but soon she read the same book and fell in love with this idea of farming.




I ended up marrying my dream country girl wife at the age of 23 in 2012, it was the happiest day of my life! Little did I know that the days were only to get better! After we married, we watched a few documentaries including Food, Inc. and Fresh, which are about farming. If it's done right it can actually heal the land instead of hurt it. The next book we read together is called "You Can Farm" by Joel Salatin. That book really got us inspired to start farming somewhere, this also changed our views on farming and makes us desire to be grass farmers and practice rotational grazing that will heal the land with any animals we get in the future.

So we asked my boss if we could plant a few things on some of his land, and he said yes, we planted corn, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, and pumpkin. This experience got us so excited that we were actually involved in something! Our minds were craving for what was next, my friend from work was raising chicken eggs in an incubator to be hatched for a science experiment for his kids. He had asked us if we wanted the chickens after they hatched because he could not take care of them for long, since he lived in an apartment. I crazily said yes, even though we lived in an apartment as well, and had no room for these birds!

We took the birds at about 1 week old, we got all the necessary supplies and raised them in our bathroom, not knowing what the next step would be. By the grace of God, two weeks later our cousins called us and said that one of their rental houses on some land would be available soon! We were so surprised and happy. We moved into the house and we quickly got to work on building a chicken run and coop, Our dreams were coming together, this was a beautiful stepping stone!

We still live at this rental house but have plenty of room for our chickens. We now have 12 hens and 1 rooster, a nice sized garden, and we are going to raise pastured meat chickens on our front and back lawns this upcoming Spring! a lot is happening!

Our chicken run area.

All I can do is thank God for his plan unfolding in my life! My wife and I had no clue that any of this would even come close to happening! I am so grateful that I married my dream country girl wife who loves helping me around the farm and loves engaging in crazy ideas with me! You know you got a keeper when she doesn't get embarrassed that you wear your muck boots to the store! She loves me for who I am and I love her for who she is! She has been the greatest inspiration in my life and without her I don't think I would have ever started farming.  Thank God for my dream country girl wife!

Pastured Poultry Shelters

Here at Agape Farm we are all about trying new enterprises and finding sustainability in the way we do things, so this year we decided to give a go at raising pastured poultry. We decided to follow the proven design of farming entrepreneur, Joel Salatin.

History of the Floorless Shelter:
Years back, when Joel was raising meat birds as a child, he needed more room to raise these birds. His business was doing well and his father gave him the idea of placing the meat birds in floorless shelters in the pasture. Placing the meat birds in a floorless shelter opened up a whole new ball park for raising birds! Joel quickly found out that by having these birds on pasture they eat less food because they get 15% of their diet off the grasses and bugs in the pasture. Having these birds in a shelter gave them unmatched protection from predators.This design of a floorless shelter quickly took off in the mind of Joel as he began to implement this design on larger scales, Joel says that you can tell if a venture is good if it is scalable, and scalable it is! Joel currently has dozens of these shelters that measure 10' * 12' * 2' high, and each shelter holds 75 birds. The reason why this method is so scalable is because the size of the shelter can easily be reduced and put in someones backyard and still hold the same profit per bird and still be sustainable!

We measured our pasture area and we decided that the size of our shelters would have to be 4' * 6' * 2' high, and hold 15 birds each. We have ordered 25 birds to arrive at the end of March 2014, We will be screwing pieces of plywood to the sides of one of these shelters to make a makeshift brooder house for the baby chicks, we will raise the birds in this brooder for the first 3 weeks and then we will remove the outer plywood and split up the birds and raise them on pasture for the next 5 weeks, We will be moving each shelter to a fresh new piece of pasture each morning, "A fresh salad bar" as Joel calls it.



The Build:

Number one rule in building these shelters: Always use 2"*2" Boards, Not 4"*4", They will make the shelter too heavy!!

Step 1: Figure out the size you need your shelter to be and how many birds you need to house, Each shelter needs to have a minimum of 1.6 Square inches per bird. ex: I went with a 4'*6' Floorplan, 4*6=24 Square feet, 24 Sq Ft / 1.6 Sq Ft Per Bird = 15 Birds, So my 4'*6' Shelter will house maximum of 15 birds.

Step 2: Draw out you design and calculate how much material you will need (again always use 2"*2" boards).
I calculated that I will need a total of 70' 8" of 2"*2" board per shelter so I went a bought 9 8' long boards per shelter.
Main Frame:
Qty 4: 6' Length
Qty 5: 4' Width
Qty 6: 2' Height
Door:
Qty 2: 3' Length of door
Qty 2: 4' 4" Width of door

Step 3: Purchase wood and assemble main frame (see picture below), For this you will need appropriate length screws (I used 2.5" long screws), a screwdriver (I used a cordless electric screw gun), and a drill w/ drill bit (optional: I like to pre-drill all my screw holes to prevent wood cracking).
I built both the top and bottoms separate first and then added the 2' long height boards to the top frame and then assembled that onto the bottom frame.

Step 4: Build in door bracing. The door can be any size you desire, I made mine about half the size of the length of the whole shelter. You want to assemble the height supports and the cross beam.
(See picture below)

Step 5: Build door, All this entails is screwing the 3' boards to the 4'4" boards to make a rectangle (The door is a little floppy until you add the outer wood to it.) The door I built is designed to not be hinged, just sitting on the shelter and moved whenever needed for feeding, watering, This way we can remove it completely when it comes time to remove the chickens for butchering.

Step 6: Install Chicken wire around one side of the shelter and a thin wood around the other I encourage you to find used free material for this, I focus on function over form when it comes to something like this. (The chickens aren't really going to mind how their shelter looks). The thinner the pieces of wood the lighter the shelter will be overall, and moving this shelter everyday, you are going to want it to be as light as possible. (See final picture)

And we're all done! More updates on the pastured poultry sure to come! Check out our Facebook for more information on the farm!

www.facebook.com/agapefarmfhl

This post may contain affiliate links, Thank you for supporting our farm!

The Coop

My wife and I built this chicken coop in the fall of 2013. We had no clue how to build a chicken coop but were determined to build one because our chickens were already 14 weeks old and needed a place to call home. So we did a lot of research about different coop designs and how many square feet are needed per chicken. Ultimately we created our own design from all the research that we did and we started.
First we got 4 4*4's and built a brace in the middle of them to hold them together and then around the bottom outer edge we lined it with 2*6's for strength.

Then we installed a piece of 1/2" plywood for the flooring. The next step was to build all the framing for the doors and roosts, we built this out of 2*4's.

We then contacted my brother in law who had connections to peach farmers who hooked us up with old peach props that were pretty much ready for the burn pile, but we knew we could use them, So we meticulously measured and cut each board and screwed it into place. Then all that was needed was to cut the top of the 4*4's to a slant and install the corrugated metal roofing.

 We then installed the roost bars, which were left over bamboo from our fence then hung the waterer and feeder inside. We blocked off the back of the coop where the nest boxes would go until the chicks were a little closer to laying age. We finally put the nest boxes in at about 22 weeks of age and they started laying at 24 weeks of age! We constantly keep a good 4 inches of straw in the bottom of the coop for deep bedding, this also helps keep the smell down by absorbing the pee and poop that comes from the chickens. What the coop turned out to look like was a surprise, we were shocked we built something so usable and beautiful with our bare hands! If you're determined enough you can do anything!! Just go out and get it! The coop's final measurement is 4'*8' and about 4' off the ground and 4' tall.

 One chicken enjoying the new roost bar.

 Nest boxes.

 Our happy flock!

Eggs in the nest boxes!!

Our First Eggs!

A few weeks ago our chicks turned 6 months old. For many chickens this is the ideal time to start laying eggs, unless it is the middle of winter, but California wants to act like it is Spring and be in the 70's and have no rain all month... Nice if you don't like the cold, bad if you want to grow food, go swimming in the summer, or drink water :). Since the weather is being strange our chickens are getting enough light and warmth to start laying eggs! On Wednesday hubby checked all of the coop instead of just the nest boxes and came running into the house telling me to come outside. I slipped on my muck boots and went out to the coop, expecting to see maybe one egg, but instead of one egg we found 5!

 I had been letting the chickens out each morning and since I thought the chickens were too young, I was not looking for any eggs, especially in the corner of the coop. Mr. Agape was only checking the nest boxes at night so it was too dark to see the rest of the coop, so to our surprise when we checked in the daytime we found these 5 in the corner. Thankfully normal eggs have a coating on the shell that keeps them good for several weeks with no refrigeration needed, meaning we can enjoy our eggs even if they have been in the coop a few too many days :).

Some other things happening on the homestead include fermenting the chicken food, planting the greenhouse, making flavored kombucha, and milk kefir. Stay tuned for some interesting posts on those!

Happy egg eating! 

Sourdough Starter

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Have you ever wanted to make your own sourdough bread but felt intimidated by learning you need to have a starter?  The recipes I had always looked up required a lot of ingredients and seemed too complicated to me. Then a few weeks ago I was on Pinterest looking for a recipe for sourdough starter, as my friend had requested it, and found a wonderful recipe from Growing Up Triplets, I definitely recommend following her. She posted a recipe for sourdough starter that required only 2 ingredients! Can you believe it? I couldn't. Now for the even crazier part, the two ingredients are water and flour! Yes, that's it. Wait what about yeast you might be asking. Well, it just so happens there are all kinds of microbes floating around in the air and yeast is also floating around up there too. It's gross to think about, but this is the way bread was made for a long time before yeast was sold in those little packets. This is also why some bread has different flavors depending on where the wild yeast was caught.

In order to start you just need to put 2/3 cup flour in a glass jar with a wide mouth or a bowl, I use a jar because it is easier to store in the fridge. Add 1/2 cup of filtered water and mix it up. Now leave it uncovered on the counter and 24 hours later add 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour to the mix, stir it up and let it sit and in about 24 hours add the 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour to the mix and stir it up again. By now it should have a fermented odor to it and have bubbles growing on top if so it's ready to use!

Sourdough Bread

4 cups of organic whole wheat flour or just white flour

2/3 cup of sourdough starter

1 2/3 cup filtered water

1 T  olive oil

1 T raw honey

1 t salt, preferably Himalayan or Celtic sea salt

Mix all ingredients together in a large ceramic or glass bowl and let sit for about 20 minutes (the batter might be hard to mix with a fork, so letting it sit allows the moisture to be absorbed). After about 20 minutes or so, wet your hands and the counter top and pull the dough out of the bowl. Give it a few rolls and kneads. Place it back into the bowl, cover with cheesecloth or a coffee filter if you used a jar, and let it sit for 12 hours.

After it’s sat for 12 hours, poke it. The dough should retain the dent your finger made (if it doesn’t, let it rise a little longer). Pull it out with wet hands onto a wet counter. Knead a couple more times and place into a greased loaf pan. Cover and set aside to rise about 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, remove cheesecloth and bake for 8-10 minutes. Bump the heat down to 350 and bake for 45-50 minutes. The loaf should sound hollow when you knock on it. Remove from oven and let cool. Remove from pan and enjoy!

To keep your starter alive, just feed it the 1/2  cup flour, 1/2 cup water mixture once a week to once a month and leave in the fridge covered with cheesecloth or a coffee filter.