Help Your Chickens Thrive This Winter Most breeds of chickens are hardy animals. Just like songbirds, they have feathers and a voracious appetite to help keep them warm when the temperatures drop. On our homestead, we choose to raise breeds that are hardy, good layers, and good mothers. Two breeds that we found represent these […]

Healthy Chickens=Healthy Profits Healthy chickens result from careful planning. Your happy hens will lay eggs regularly which you can turn around and sell for profit. Following are the practices we implement in our flock to encourage optimal health in order to produce the most amount of eggs. Ways to save money It can be easy […]

Animal tractors are bottomless pens for housing livestock. They are designed to be moved easily. Whether you have an existing barn or coop for your animals or you are considering adding livestock to your homestead, animal tractors may be a good fit for you. Virtually all small livestock and poultry can be housed in an […]

I’m getting excited for spring, as we’re about to start hatching season here at Pleasant Valley Farm! Each spring, the poultry help to provide a boost to our income at a time when there are plenty of expenses on the farm. And while I’ve been making a modest income for quite a few years now, […]

We plant rows of sunflowers every year here in the gardens at Pleasant Valley Farm. These beautiful flowers provide a surprising number of benefits! Our garden field is roadside, next to our farm stand. Each spring it’s exciting to see tidy rows of vegetable plants. But as the season progresses, it seems each year the […]

Here at Pleasant Valley Farm, we raise a number of heritage breeds and try to be active in helping to conserve them as well. We like Dexter cattle because they are great homestead cows, produce a nice beef carcass, calve easily and are great mothers, are hardy, easy keepers, give a nice amount of milk […]

Have you heard of livestock being called a heritage breed? Have you ever wondered what exactly that meant? Is it a buzzword, or something that matters? Most importantly, could they be a good fit for your homestead? Simply put, a heritage breed has been around for a long time and was generally developed in a […]

Although our hatching season has ended, this is the time of year we have money to invest in equipment and livestock for our farm’s future. With that in mind, I thought it would be a great time to follow up on our first post about hatching poultry and take an in-depth look at the kind […]

Spring on a farm can be stressful as you try to fit everything that needs attention into the time you have available, and it’s often equally stressful to look at your bank account. It sometimes seems that all you have are expenses, with very little income before crops are ready. One way we diversify our […]